Hello!

I am MsChelle and I have been coloring my medium brown and white hair for 26 years. 

It didn't used to be salt and pepper, of course.  Back when I started coloring it was just medium brown with some natural dark blonde to light brown, and medium auburn highlights that came out in the sun and certain artificial lights.

My first color was a strawberry blonde - too light, so every color since has been no lighter than medium blonde to black (my mother's natural hair color).

It is currently a very dark chocolate brown with a little over a month's worth of white (yep, just white) coming in throughout my head.

My grandmother is still alive.  She is 87, and is almost completely  white (if you see something that looks black in gray or white hair, the individual is not 100% gray - no matter how up there in age he/she is).

Back in the 1970s and 1980s, she had her hair colored medium champagne blonde at a salon every 4-6 weeks, but stopped more than 20 years ago after her grays became too resistant to take color anymore (yes, folks, that can and does happen).


Knowing that she's been almost completely gray almost as long as I've been alive and that she's not colored her hair for more than 20 years, I decided to ask her what her natural hair color was since some folks who have only been coloring for 5-20 years (less time than I have been) seem to think their natural hair color is whatever color they've been putting on their hair all these 5-20 years (we have color pictures of Gram from the 1940s and 1950s, so I already knew her natural hair color).


Without missing a beat (or giving me any "well, when I was a child, I was... and then, I was..." stories), my grandmother proudly blurted out, "medium brown."


If an 87 year old woman who has not seen her natural hair color for the better part of the last 40 years can vividly remember what her color was, surely, those of you who are closer in age to me can do the same.


Your natural hair color is not the colorant you are using.  It is what you see coming in at the roots.